La Belle Dame sans Merci Flashcards
Knight’s state of lifelessness
‘Alone and palely loitering’
‘So haggard and so woe-begone’
‘A lily on thye brow’
‘On thy cheeks a fading rose/ Fast withereth’
Natural imagery of lifelessness
‘The sedge has withered from the lake,/ And no birds sing’
‘The harvest’s done’
The maiden as fantastical
‘I met a lady in the meads’
‘Full beautiful, a faery’s child’
‘her eyes were wild’
‘for sidelong would she bed, and sing/ A faery’s song’
‘And sure in language strange she said-‘I love thee true’
‘She took me to her elfin grot’
Feminist perspective: the knight as abusing the Maiden’s sexuality
‘I set her on my pacing steed’
‘And there she wept and sighed full sore’
‘And there I shut her wild wild eyes/ With kisses four’
The Maiden as a femme fatal
‘And there she lullèd me asleep/ And there I dreamed- Ah! Woe betide!- The latest dream I ever dreamt/ On the cold hill side’
‘I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death pale were they all’
‘They cried- La Belle Dame sans Merci/ Thee hath in thrall’
‘I saw their starved lips in the gloom,/ With horrid warning gapèd wide’
Desolate, lifeless setting
‘Alone I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side’
‘And this is why I sojourn here/ Alone and palely loitering’
‘Though the sedge is withered from the lake,/ And no birds sing’
